All Earthly Things Above
by TheHummingbirdMoth
Summary: Thor and his brother are kidnapped by purists. It does not end well. WARNING: Rape, incest, squick.
1. Uggr

WARNING: Non-con. Gang rape. Altered mental state involving drugs. Seriously, this is gross, be careful. Also, a less-than-flattering depiction of a group of Norse pagans. Sorry, real life religious folk, I know most of you don't suck.

Written for the Thor kink meme on livejournal.

**Chapter 1: Uggr**

Now:

This is not his brother.

Thor shuts his eyes, shuts them tight.

0

Then:

The cell contains one lightbulb, one locked door, and two gods of varying degrees of good humour.

He doesn't know how the men managed to capture both of them. Usually tactics that work to subdue Loki will not work to subdue Thor, and visa versa.

He knows how they caught him; with weapons of science, a collar around his neck that burns where it touches his skin, and, as long as the blinking red light upon it remains lit, reduces his strength to that of two mortal men instead of two thousand, robs him of his control over wind and weather, and deafens Mjolnir to his calls for aid.

Where is Mjolnir? What are these ANIMALS doing with his hammer?

"I'm sure they aren't doing anything to damage it, Thor," comes the sibilant voice of his cellmate.

It is a matter of great sadness, Thor thinks, that Loki should be the one person in the universe who can best divine the lay of his thoughts.

"Mayhap they are simply using it for sport," Loki goes on, because a. it has been two hours since they were brought here, and b. Loki grows bored if he is forced to look at the same scenery for more than two minutes and c. when Loki is bored, Thor will suffer. This is one of the fundamentals of the cosmos, absolute and unbreakable. "There is a human game I saw on one of their televisual implements. It is called 'hammer-throwing.' The rules of the game are…"

"Do you have anything useful to contribute, brother?" Thor enquires.

He'd assumed that Loki was to blame when he'd woken up in a cell, the cursed collar scalding his neck, and the trickster staring down his long nose at him. The immediate throttling that had commenced at that point had been cut short by Thor's realisation that Loki, too, wore a collar, although the light upon his kept flickering, and his strength was not as greatly reduced as Thor's was, for he was able to push the thunder god away easily.

Not nearly strong enough to free them, though. Like Thor, he is bound to the wall by chains that end at his wrists and ankles.

Thor tests the chains. If he were at full strength, snapping them would be like snapping spider silk. As it is…

"They have another game," says Loki. "It is called 'croquet'. You take a mallet, smaller than Mjolnir, but not unsimilar in shape, and you arrange several hoops…"

Perhaps if I loop the chain around my neck, Thor thinks, and pull with all my might, I can strangle myself to death.

Attempting to find comfort leaning back against the bare wall, Thor reflects upon all the people he would rather be locked up with, while Loki's ramblings become white noise in the background.


	2. Gnísting

**Gnísting**

When their captor presents himself, Loki watches him from the sidelines, very still.

"Who are you?" Thor barks. It has been four hours since he awoke, and he is hungry. The man in front of him wears a pale grey suit, and has pale grey eyes. He positions himself exactly one inch further than the chains allow Thor to reach.

"My name is not important," he says. "The organisation I represent…"

He speaks Old Norse. Not very well, not as though it is the language he learned in the cradle. Nonetheless, it has been a long time since Thor heard it spoken, and it softens him towards his jailor somewhat. So he doesn't quite bellow the words, "Why have you brought us here?"

"The organisation I represent is called YGGDRASIL. It's an acronym, but frankly, I usually forget what it stands for. This is our symbol."

The grey-suited man draws down the collar of his shirt and reveals to Thor a tattoo at the nape of his neck- the word 'unity' in Old Norse, if Thor's memory serves him well.

Wondering if he is supposed to be impressed, Thor inspects it for a moment, then says; "What do you want?"

"We are an international group of practising pagans," the man continues. "We are descended from the first, true Norsemen; we are the means through which the one, true religion has survived into the twenty-first century…"

"So you worship Odin and his kin," interrupts Thor. He vaguely remembers the days when mortals left him tribute in the form of goats and rich mead. Good days. Far better than this one, at any rate.

From behind the man, Loki offers Thor a slow, cruel smirk, and arches his eyebrows. Thor knows his brother well enough to interpret a devastating indictment of the grey man's intelligence, ancestry and probable descendants.

Thor suspects his brother is dismissing their captor too readily. The man before him gives him an uneasy feeling. Talking to him doesn't feel like talking to a person should feel. It feels more like talking to a lump of clothed meat.

"I am Thor Odinson, Lightning Bringer and slayer of serpents," he growls. "If what you say is true, I am your god. Your obeisance is somewhat lacking."

"You are not Thor," says the man, calmly. "We have teams of religious historians who have dedicated their lives to a thorough examination of the Eddas and the…"

"You are willing to take the word of long-dead mortal men over the word of your alleged god, who sits before you now in the very flesh?" It is Thor's turn to raise his eyebrows, and Loki's smirk has blossomed into a grin. If he giggles, Thor suspects they will be in real trouble.

"You are not Thor," says the man. Total certainty, infinite patience. A bit like Balder, if Balder had eyes without a soul behind them. "Thor had red hair."

"Ah," says Thor. "I see. Truly, that proves it. Thine powers of reasoning are beyond compare."

He thinks of the mortals who offered him goats. They weren't anything like this, he is quite sure.

"Thor also had a beard," the man persists, and how the Warriors Three are going to laugh when Thor tells them about this.

"I shaved," says Thor.

The man sighs, a sound like a dying butterfly. "Your flippant comments serve only to prove my point. The real Thor would not foul his tongue with the English language."

"I speak the All-tongue, which every man hears as his own native language." His patience is wearing thin. "I have lived over three thousand lives. I have endured over three thousand Ragnaroks. I am very, very old, mortal man. And I would beg you to get to the point."

"The point. Mmm. Yes. You revolt me. That is the point," says the man. "You are a mockery of everything I believe in. You revolt all of us. We are going to kill you, but first, we are going to punish you. Both of you."


	3. Nár

**Nár**

Loki says they are 'adorable', but what he means is that they are 'hilarious.'

To pass the time, he pokes a beetle scuttling along the floor with a stick, and when Thor asks him to stop tormenting the poor thing he pops it into his mouth, and swallows it whole.

When Thor is ready to talk to him again, they debate possible escape strategies. Loki, Thor thinks, does not dedicate the full breadth of his intellect to the exercise; he seems too curious to find out what the mortals are going to do next.

The grey man returns within the hour. This time, he is accompanied by ten large mortal men, all with a similar tattoo over their collarbones. They follow behind him in a triangle, like a flock of geese.

Loki greets them all with a big smile, which is totally ignored. Thor greets the grey man with a glare, which is not returned.

"Are you well?" he asks Thor. Thor does not dignify that with a response.

"We were worried that our method of capturing you might have impaired your higher brain functions," he continues, oblivious. "Which would be a pity, because we want you fully cognisant for this next part. We're going to torture you, you see."

Thor and Loki are the sons of Odin One-Eye, who was always aware of the danger his political opponents posed to his children, and, as such, did his best to inure them against torture from a young age. His very best. Thor's comrades in arms are often stunned at the levels of pain he can withstand without flinching. It isn't stoicism; it's practice.

Behind the man, Loki gives a sharp, affected gasp, as though he's actually fearful of the prospect of being tortured by these silly men. His hand flies to cover his mouth and his eyes widen comically. It's so ridiculous Thor has to fight to keep from chuckling.

The man in grey turns to look at Loki for the first time. He makes a gesture, and one of the burly men stalks up to the seated trickster god, reaching out to finger the collar upon which the red light still flickers.

Thor watches as the men then huddle together and exchange words. Loki rolls his eyes at him and mouths; 'mortals.'

"The collar isn't working as well as we'd hoped on that one," says the grey man, coming back to Thor. "He's not about to turn us all into toads, but he might telepathically contact one of your friends."

Thor has already asked Loki if he can do that. He can't. Still, the fact that their enemy doesn't know exactly how powerless they are is encouraging.

"May I ask how you intend to torture your gods?" says Loki, who until now has refrained from addressing the man directly. As an afterthought, he adds, "And are you, perhaps, responsible for the loss of my helmet?"

"Your helmet has been destroyed," says the man, "for it offended us. As for your initial question; we are going to… defile you."

The man fishes around in the pocket of his suit, and withdraws a corked vial, which he holds aloft for Thor to see. A golden liquid sloshes within it. "This is a sorcerous concoction obtained from the tyrant Doom at great personal expense to our organisation," he says. "Its name means called 'Heart's Desire' in Latverian.'"

Thor has not heard of it. Neither, by the cocking of his head, has Loki.

"Sigmund," says the man, addressing one of his muscular co-workers, "get the smaller one's mouth open."

Loki is much, much faster and a good bit stronger than he looks, but bereft of magic and divinity and with no where to run, he knows better than to try to scamper away from the four men who approach him from either side. Instead, he bends his efforts to appearing artfully bored.

"Magic potions," says the grey man, "cannot be administered via syringe, we find. Very peculiar. They dissolve in the tube. Thankfully, we have ways and means."

One of them holds his head back. One of them squeezes his nostrils shut. Ordinarily, Loki's magics are powerful enough that he can hold his breath for days at a time. With the collar round his neck, he lasts scarcely three minutes before he has to gasp, and when he does the fourth man pushes the uncorked vial into his mouth, so far down that there is no hope of choking it up, and shakes it to empty the bottle. When it is empty, he draws it back and hands it to the grey man.

Loki's mouth slams shut as soon as it is out, tightening into a resentful line. Then he blinks. Twice. Thrice.

Then his eyes invert.

The black pupils become green dots. The green rings become black. The grey man nods, and murmurs to the man who administered the potion, "And the rest of it too now, I think."

Thor yanks on his chains, but they may as well be the roots of the World Tree for all they give.

A syringe is placed against his brother's neck, containing Odin knows what, and the entire payload is injected with a practiced gesture. Loki doesn't attempt to annoy them by wriggling, which frightens Thor more than anything else that has happened to him today. Once it is done, the men relax their grip on his shoulders a bit.

"Good, good," says the grey man, stepping forward and kneeling in front of the trickster god, his men parting to make space for him. As they do, Thor catches sight of Loki's face, and feels his hammer hand clench reflexively as dread spreads through his chest.

The inverted, poison green pupils have blown wide, reducing the black to a barely visible line. Loki's eyelids have settled at half-mast, strangely distant. Not focused on the grey man's hand, which brushes over his lips, drawing them gently apart to make him gape. He looks… tranquil, as though he's spent the last four hours having oil rubbed into his limbs by nymphs and drinking wine. It's such an utterly alien expression on his face that Thor almost doesn't recognise him.

"Loki was always one of my personal favourites, when my mother first read the old stories to me," says the grey man. "Loki Skywalker, herald of the death of the gods. And then I saw you on the television, fighting the Avengers in your stupid helmet and your stupid green tights. I cannot… tell you… how much your existence has plagued me, false god."

Then he kisses Loki's slack, unresisting mouth.


	4. Tafn

**Tafn**

Loki does nothing.

That is what stuns Thor initially. He'd been expecting his brother to either return the kiss with a show of mocking ardour, or to bite out the man's tongue.

He does nothing. His expression doesn't change at all, eyes still staring dully at the man's face as he pulls away.

"Perfect," says their enemy. "Sigmund, the scissors, if you would."

As Thor watches, as useless as a dead fly stuck to a window, they cut his hair off, inexpertly, leaving him half shorn. Loki seems to have the energy to hold himself upright but to do nothing more, and when he does rally and raise a weak hand to brush them away, the grey man puts his hands on his skull, rocking his head back and forth while murmuring shushing noises until he subsides again. With the trickster god's head resting upon his shoulder, nose tip brushing the tattoo, the grey man nods to his associates, who help him to begin stripping Thor's brother.

Thor begins to yell, and continues to yell until three of the men behind him force a gag over his mouth.

Now almost entirely bare, boots gone, chest exposed, Loki leans back into the arms of one of the thugs while the grey man administers experimental caresses to his dark nipples. Hairless and with ecstasy glowing softly on his face, he looks entirely too pure a thing for the four brutes clustered about him.

Thor sickens as he remembers where he last saw his brother wearing that expression. Not since they were children, and Frigga combed their hair before bedtime. Loki adored these grooming rituals as much as Thor despised them, and once his mother placed the comb into his freshly-washed hair, the same docile, deeply contented half-smile that he wears now would appear.

Thor works very hard to push his mother from his mind. She does not belong in this place.

The grey man strokes his brother's cock though his clothing, before baring it. His motions are repetitive, calculated, and Loki gives a soft mewling sound.

This is not his brother. Loki Odinson does not mewl.

"Join me," the grey man murmurs.

They do. Immediately. One of them is already clearly erect, which is hardly surprising. The grey man may loathe them far too much to feel anything more than satisfaction at the atrocity he is committing, but the rest of them are only human, and Loki is undeniably beautiful with his limbs splayed out and his eyes wandering vaguely about the room as their captor makes him harden in his hand.

There is a thin, glistening line of drool running down his chin.

Loki's arms come up, and for a moment Thor is seized by hope, until he watches those arms slide over the grey man's shoulders, where they exhaust what little energy they had, and fall limp again, leaving him half-embracing the man who now turns his attentions to his long, white back.

The men paw Loki's stomach and legs, rub hands up his thighs as he moans. One works a finger into his mouth, which he suckles eagerly, while another pushes his knees apart and another spreads his buttocks.

Thor closes his eyes, but cannot keep them closed. They open, shut, open, shut, a parade of nightmares before him whenever he steadies himself to peak.

Open.

Loki sighs feebly, and pushes back against one of their cocks.

Shut. Open.

Another of them leaves a deep love bite on his brother's neck.

Shut. Open.

His brother comes, in thick spurts over the grey man's suit. The grey man casually slaps him for it, which does nothing to draw him from his torpor, and a minute's casual rubbing later he is hard again.

The room stinks of sex.

The nausea in Thor's gut becomes so intense that he wonders if vomiting with the gag on might drown him.

This is not his brother.

Finally, the grey man rubs his chin, thoughtfully. "Put him on the false Thunderer's lap," he says.

Thor's wrists, by now, are red and bleeding from pulling at the chains, but he tries again regardless.

One man scoops the mischief-maker up and four take their place at Thor's sides, hands on his shoulders, holding him in place.

His brother weighs as much as a child. Thor cannot talk with the gag, but he thrashes his head and bucks like a wild horse, knocking Loki from his lap. They simply pick him up again and put him back.

"Loki," says the grey man, not far away- Thor cannot see him, Thor can only see Loki's eyelashes as they push the two gods together like children trying to make their dolls have sex. "This is your brother. He's very upset right now. Why don't you make him feel better?"

"Mmmph," hums Loki, nuzzling Thor's chin like a kitten. He is so hard against Thor's stomach that all Thor would have to do to make him come would be to push back against him, touch him just once.

It takes six hands to hold Thor's head in place. But that is not what does it.

One of the men is now working on removing Thor's clothes, but that is not what does it.

What does it is the moment when Loki reaches up and touches a lock of his hair, the drugged delirium briefly draining away to be replaced by something else, something very sad.

"Thor, kiss me?" Loki begs, meek and pleading.

The chains snap and the collar on Thor's neck** explodes.**


	5. Skjǫldr

**Skjǫldr**

When he was young, his mother told him stories of the Nine Day Slaughter, a period during Odin's last battle in Jotunheim when he had, for nine days and nine nights, carved out the heart of Farbauti's ten thousand remaining soldiers with three hundred of his best men on horseback. Farbauti's men had been well-armed and seething with hate for the man they had by then dubbed The Butcher of Asgard, but Odin had the brain of a tactical genius, and magic, and his men were well-fed and eager. Nonetheless, the odds were formidable.

Over the course of nine sleepless days, four thousand frost giants had met their end at the edge of Odin's sword. The battlefield had become a lake of blood where, to this day, neither the tiniest flower nor blade of grass would grow.

Thor had, when he was a child, greatly wished to see such a battle. When he had grown older and wiser, the desire had diminished.

He stands in a lake of blood now, mortal blood, eighty soft little corpses floating around his feet. There had been two hundred men in the compound; all the rest were vaporised instantly by Mjolnir's first swing, clouds of blood now coating what few standing structures remain. The hammer had reached his hand, knocking down walls in the rush to get to him, ten seconds after the collar had exploded.

The man in the grey suit is not dead yet. He is standing to one side, an expression of mild interest on his face, having watched Thor slaughter his followers like cattle.

His boots sloshing with blood, Thor crosses the room to stand before him. Picks him up by his lapels.

"I do not fear to die," the man says. "Although it is a matter of great sadness to me that is at your hands and not at the hands of the one, true Thor."

"I am not going to kill you," Thor says, and, still holding the man aloft, walks away from the toppled facility, the broken concrete, and the bodies.

They were kept in the basement three-story high complex, located among high, snow-capped mountains. The air outside smells fresh, fresher than Thor will feel for a very long time.

Loki stands not far away, beneath an apple tree. The collar lies twisted and scorched by his feet; the very first thing Thor did, after tearing them all off him like so many leeches, was to clasp Loki's neck (which brought on such a sweetly delighted smile), rip off and then crush the evil piece of metal into tinfoil. With the magic suppressors disabled, the ensorcelled runes and protective charms Loki kept concealed on his person (etched onto the backs of his thighs and the bottoms of his feet, tucked away behind his left molar and at least one tiny one that hid itself away in his lower intestines) activated, burning the drugs from his body almost instantly.

As the black had leaked back into his pupils and the green had shifted into his irises, Thor had not stayed to watch that placid smile fade, nor to watch what had risen in its place. There had been other work to attend to, and Mjolnir had a merciless song to sing .

(Thor remembers the old days, when humanity had left him tribute in exchange for his blessing, and how many of those tributes had been bloody. There had been one family that had starved itself for two summers to afford to buy a goat whose neck they had slit at his temple.)

Now Loki, naked and upright, blood-spattered (though not nearly so much as Thor), hair shaved so short that white patches of bare scalp throw off a glare in the afternoon sunlight. His face is blank, but deliberately so. His eyes, when Thor can bear to meet them, are terrifying.

Thor drops the man in the grey suit at his brother's feet like tribute.

"Leave," Loki says.

Thor does so.

Shortly after arriving back at Asgard, shocking his friends with his appearance, his silence and his lack of any explanation for his absence, he learns that Heimdal has taken poorly.

"Not an hour before you returned to us," Fandral explains, "the Watchman began retching. Violently."

"He's spent the last thirty minutes vomiting," says Sif, who has been the only one to refrain from questioning him. Wise Sif. "A healer is with him now."

When Thor finds Heimdal, the Guardian of Bifrost sits with his head in his hands.

"How could you?" is all he says when he looks up. "Why couldn't you simply have killed him?"

"You know why, Allseeer," says Thor.

"I saw you captured. I could not see the place where you were held," says Heimdal. "They used some trickery to shield you from my eyes. But I saw what happened after you were freed. I saw what you did to those men. I do not know what sins they committed against you in captivity. If they deserved your wrath, then I respect and accept their murder. But Thor, Thor, my prince, of all cruel and inhumane punishments…"

Heimdal's voice breaks. When he raises his head from his hands again, tears stream down his cheeks. "How, Thor, how could you give him to LOKI?"

"You do not know what he did," says Thor, feeling the rasp in his throat.

"You do not know what I SAW LOKI DO TO HIM!" screams Heimdal.

The very stars seem to quake. Heimdal never screams. Ordinarily, proud Thor would be on bended knee before the Watchman, offering total contrition. But today Thor feels nothing, and can do naught but shrug.

"Did he deserve it, Odinson?" Heimdal says, softer now. "Were the atrocities I just watched your brother commit justified?"

Thor thinks of all the great evil he has known- all the great evil he has forgiven. All the vile crimes he has known his brother guilty of. In the greater scheme of things, what the man in the grey suit did to them was not that great a thing. For an immortal, who has lived over three thousand lives and will live millions more, what is one act of violation, really?

Then he thinks of his brother's sagging mouth, and that thin trail of drool, and he says, "Yes" with such terrible vehemence that Heimdal draws back.

"Then I offer you my sympathy, and, if you will accept it, my comfort," says Heimdal, after a pause.

Thor accepts one, but has not the strength to accept the other.

After that, he remains away from Midgard for some time. He wants, for the moment, nothing to do with mortals. Doesn't want to see them, doesn't want to bother having to separate out the good from the bad in his mind. Doesn't want to have to be reminded that many of his greatest, truest allies have been mortals.

For now, Thor wants to allow himself to wallow in his hatred a while longer.

Mead does not help. Intoxicating substances of any kind bring to mind that trail of drool, and then he starts breaking things at random. Balder looks so upset when he does that.

Instead, he flies, and orbits the sun. Baths repeatedly. Takes Sleipnir out of the stables and rides him until they are both ready to collapse.

On the thirteenth day of his self-exposed hermitude, Loki appears in his bedroom at exactly three minutes past midnight.


	6. Bróðir

**Bróðir**

When the moon is a white sliver in the window and the sky is crystal clear, Thor wakes to find Loki perched on top of him.

Wispy as a moth, distributing his weight precisely so that he doesn't press down uncomfortably on any part of Thor's anatomy. Yet.

Thor does not ask how his brother gained entry to the royal bedroom, nor how he bypassed Heimdal; at this particular point in their lives, Loki is an exile (for the crime of stealing all ten of a milkmaid's fingers, for reasons he has yet to divulge.) Nor does he ask what he wants, for he already knows. He wants it too. And he doesn't even consider asking what he actually did to the man in the grey suit.

His brother is angry. Thor can see it in every poised inch of him.

With a snap of his fingers, Loki is nude, his clothing disappearing into green stardust that sprinkles over the bed. His helmet, however, remains.

"Where have you been?" Thor asks, knowing exactly what sort of response 'How are you?' will get him.

"Purging," says Loki. Short, clipped syllables, which means he's VERY angry.

"Ah. Good."

Thor doesn't know what many of his brother's rituals entail, but suspects they involve blood. And, indeed, there is a long gash over Loki's jugular, a raw scar where the flesh is still knitting itself together in front of Thor's eyes.

His brother is angry, and Thor knows why. There is nothing Loki values more than his freedom; not his brother, not his life, not anyone's life. Thor does not resent this fact, although there are many aspects of his brother's behaviour and philosophy that he does resent. The constant drive for autonomy is what makes Loki Loki. It is the very heart of him.

Thor knows his brother is angry with him, not for failing to save him from the worst of it, but for bearing witness to his loss of autonomy.

He can see Loki trying to decide what piece of him to attack first. Bones will be broken this night.

"Did you like me like that?" Loki asks, casually, trailing fingers over the fair, dense hair on his chest.

Thor slaps him across the face, just hard enough to get the point across, and gets a ghost of a smile in return. Then Loki digs his nails into Thor's linen, makes them into claws and shreds the sheet covering Thor's chest. Leans down and hisses "Get your arse in the air, serpent slayer," ancient and fierce in that moment.

There is no joy in their copulation; there often isn't. They have known each other too long and too well, and sex between them is an expression of grudging fondness as often as it is an expression of desperate, total love. This night, sex is a gesture of apology, of healing. It isn't exciting, but it is satisfying, particularly when Loki bites his tongue hard and he clenches around the smaller man's cock until he screeches and comes deep in Thor's body.

"I spoke of it to no one," Thor says, staring up at the ceiling in the aftermath. Salty tears, his own, stain his face, and he licks away as many as his tongue can reach.

His helmet poking uncomfortably into Thor's ribs, Loki mutters, "I do not care if you speak of it to the high council members or to the boy who mucks out the stables."

The words comfort Thor just as the clawmarks across his chest do, because of what they mean: They are gods, his brother is telling him, and they are the pillars of the universe and it is their role to suffer. They are old, and they will get older, and this pain will pass like all the others.

They fuck a second time. This time, it's better. With the humiliation burned away only the rage remains, and when they are both this angry they are forces of nature.

Thor arches as Loki takes him into his mouth, that demon of a tongue playing magic tricks over his sensitive flesh.

Outside, storm clouds are gathering, building up charge. Thunder begins to rumble over Asgard's steeples, waking children. Rain starts to fall, a patter at first, then a torrent, then a monsoon, drenching anyone unlucky enough to be caught outside at this hour to the bone. Hail swiftly follows, in chunks the size of apples.

Loki gasps as Thor kisses the pale birthmark on his hips, making him writhe against the sheets, his hair colour flickering from black to orange to tawny, his skin running the gamut from blue-white to the hue of basaltic lava.

Within the palace, every candle flickers spontaneously to life at once. Forges erupt throughout the city, throwing up sparks and scalding blacksmiths. The torches that light the way from the courtyard to the city gates sputter, then flare so bright that they nearly blind a pair of lovers walking beneath them.

"Brother," Loki snarls, and Thor comes bellowing. A massive lightning bolt touches down in the street outside the palace, filling the room for a second with white light and setting the trees that line the road outside ablaze.

The room stinks of sex. Thor waist for the nausea, but it doesn't come. Two of his ribs are broken, so are three of Loki's fingers. Loki is muttering in his ear, that he hates him, that he loves him, that he will kill him and that he will keep him forever. And Thor smiles because he knows his brother is not lying about any of these things, that in his brother's mind (and in reality, because they are gods) they are not the least bit contradictory. The kiss they share tastes like rain water and embers, and the storm that rages above Asgard lasts for the rest of the night.

In the morning, Thor's bed is empty, Asgard is a rain-soaked wreck, and there are repairs to be made. Thor sighs, sets his shoulders, and goes to tend to his people.


End file.
